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=============================================================================This forum is an online community officially sanctioned by the USA Network and dedicated to the discussion of USA's hit show, White Collar. This forum is corporate-run and subject to USA network's Terms of Service and Forum Guidelines. Please remember that USA's Forum Guidelines go beyond the "right to free speech and press" as outlined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. All of the USA Forums are monitored by the USA Webmaster, USA Admin and USA Moderators. USA Admin has a few basic guidelines for all members. USA's Terms of Service and Forum Guidelines are posted below.

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Posting constructive criticism and divergent viewpoints in a respectful manner is encouraged. This can lead to some great progressive discussions filled with a lot of fantastic back and forth commentary of varying opinions. Again, respect of one's fellow members and being constructive is key.

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a. PM the member and attempt to resolve the issueb. block/ignore the member's posts and/or PMsc. seek out the moderators for possible resolutions of such conflicts

4) Disrespectful Discussions Involving the Personal Lives of the Cast and Others Associated with the Show, Including Their Loved Ones - Disrespectful discussions about the spouses, girlfriends, boyfriend, partners of choice of the cast and crew and their families are deemed off limits on the public side of the forum. Posts that are deemed derogatory and/or inappropriate and/or disrespectful will be removed from the forum by the moderators and members will be notified via PM of the actions taken. Members are free to discuss such things either via PM with other members or via other online venues, such as Twitter or other forums.

5)Duplicate Threads - Creating duplicating threads for the same topic of conversation is unnecessary, annoying to the members of our forum and considered bad form. Please remember that every thought does not need a thread. Before starting a new thread, please check to see if one exists that fits whatever it is you would like to post. That's easily done by checking the White Collar Index which is pinned at the top of the main page. The WC Forum Index contains links to the most popular topics on the forum and can be found here: WC Forum Index

We also have a Question and Answer thread pinned at the top of the main page. It was created to minimize the possibility of new threads being created simply to ask a single question. You can find that here: Question & Answer

USA_Admin requests that duplicate/redundant threads be merged.

6) Spoilers – the definition of spoilers and the place to post any spoilers you might want to share can be found in our Official Spoilers Thread here: Official Spoiler Thread

The vast majority of our forum members have agreed to honor the wishes of Jeff Eastin and the White Collar writers not to post, discuss or refer to "sides" and spoilers obtained from "sides" anywhere on this forum. This is the official USA White Collar Forum and as such should respect the intellectual property of Jeff Eastin and the White Collar writers.

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10) Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Please remember that we can't see facial expressions, hear vocal intonations or the laughter of someone when they responded to your post. This means that it is possible that something you found to be offensive was not the intention of the poster. If you find something they said to be offensive, please ask for clarification before assuming they meant to be mean. If you don't feel comfortable posting your question to the board, then send the poster a PM (click their name, then click "send message"). Please don't assume they were trying to be mean and get in their face in return. That's how board wars get started.

In plain speak that means be nice and treat everyone the way you want others to treat you. If you're feeling grumpy or full of angst, take a deep breath, go for a walk and postpone posting on the forum until you're able to play well with others. Everyone has feelings. Just because we can't see one another doesn't mean that words can't hurt us.

Thanks, Li Ann! Could I also add a gentle reminder to use spoiler tags before posting spoilers, and to resist the urge to put a spoiler in a thread heading. Someone posted Jeff Eastin's tweets, two of which are very spoilery, without tags. It's perfectly simple to hide a spoiler and give others the choice to read them or not. Not everyone wants to!

Just type

[spoiler ] spoiler goes here [/spoiler ] (leave the space after the r out) and you get

I assume there are a lot of people with limited forum experience but a thread title like the one's we saw yesterday spoiled the entire ending of Friday's show for me. I was hugely disappointed as I always stay clear of episode specific threads until I have seen the ep. I hope people learn that title threads telling specific details (esp. as major as what we saw with the Free Fall ending-man, I'm still disappointed that I knew the ending) is tantamount to walking out of a theatre announcing the ending of a movie to the waiting audience.

"The virtuous spirit has no need for thanks or approval; only the certain conviction that what has been done is right."

I assume there are a lot of people with limited forum experience but a thread title like the one's we saw yesterday spoiled the entire ending of Friday's show for me. I was hugely disappointed as I always stay clear of episode specific threads until I have seen the ep.

That's one of the biggest disappointments on a forum - to come on and have a spoiler blasted in a thread heading. I don't know if people are aware of this, but the person who starts a thread can always go back and edit the thread heading. I hope a bit of discretion is exercised in the future when new threads are started.

This wasn't much of an issue until these last couple episodes, but given the passion that the last episode ignited, as seen in both the massive overlap in thread and the spoilers flying about, Li Ann was particularly timely in starting this thread so we can have a bit of a shared consciousness about these issues.

I don't know how others feel, but starting a post with SPOILER in caps isn't a sufficient way to hide a spoiler with then spoiler tags option is available. You eye still catches what's in the post, even if you try not to.

Summer Fun, CathysOpinion, OldTimeStyle and Nancee........thank you all for posting your support of this thread. Hopefully, it will catch on and we'll see less "nonsense" threads in the future.

This thread could and probably should become one where in addition to "duplicate threads" we post our thoughts on other forum related matters, e.g., the "spoiler" tips that were posted here. I'm going to change the topic description to include "spoilers". If you have any other suggestions for what should be included, please let me know.

Thanks again.

Ann

ETA: If we make an effort to keep this thread on Page 1 of the forum, it might have more impact.

The expanded thread heading should help a bit. The onslaught of threads seems to have subsided, which hopefully gives us a chance to restore a bit of order to chaos in whatever we can. I agree, keeping this thread near the top of the first page is a good idea, particularly once we approach the return of the series. Hopefully others will weigh in in the interim and we'll have a bit more of a sense of what the group wants in terms of excessive threads, etc.

Summer Fun, CathysOpinion, OldTimeStyle and Nancee........thank you all for posting your support of this thread. Hopefully, it will catch on and we'll see less "nonsense" threads in the future.

This thread could and probably should become one where in addition to "duplicate threads" we post our thoughts on other forum related matters, e.g., the "spoiler" tips that were posted here. I'm going to change the topic description to include "spoilers". If you have any other suggestions for what should be included, please let me know.

Thanks again.

Ann

ETA: If we make an effort to keep this thread on Page 1 of the forum, it might have more impact.

You are welcome. I had posted on a message board years ago, and forgotten much of what I had learned. When I decided to post again, it was on Burn Notice.

The first thing I did was read about the "posting facts". This would be a great thread to bring here. And there is also a thread welcoming newbies. Perhaps another thread you might consider. I do not know where this info orginated, but it sure was helpful to me!

You are welcome. I had posted on a message board years ago, and forgotten much of what I had learned. When I decided to post again, it was on Burn Notice.

The first thing I did was read about the "posting facts". This would be a great thread to bring here. And there is also a thread welcoming newbies. Perhaps another thread you might consider. I do not know where this info orginated, but it sure was helpful to me!

Nancee

The Burn Notice forum is extremely well organized and managed. The moderators do a great job. The White Collar forum is so new that it hasn't evolved yet, at least that's what I'm hoping. If we continue to make an effort, we might just make a difference. The threads you mentioned on the BN Forum are "pinned". They always appear at the top of the page. That's something only the moderator can do. Hopefully the USA Admin (and there must be several of them) will get around to doing it. We should have a "welcome new members" thread pinned and others dedicated to "spoilers" and for "White Collar News". That would eliminate the need for someone to start a new thread everytime they read a tweet or an interview. I just started this thread so if you would like to start any of the others we've mentioned here, you should do it. Perhaps one of the other members who thought this thread was overdue would create one of the other "standard forum" threads mentioned.

Okay. I'll be patient. A moderator will get around to us soon, I suspect.

Nancee

Nancee,

I just noticed that you started the Episode Discussion Thread for Free Fall and the Neal and Kate thread. Both of those are excellent topics for discussion. Had I noticed that earlier, I wouldn't have tried to get you to start any of the threads we mentioned earlier. Hopefully, one of the other members, SummerFun, CathysOpinion or OldTimeStyle who support the effort to organize this forum will do it.

I just noticed that you started the Episode Discussion Thread for Free Fall and the Neal and Kate thread. Both of those are excellent topics for discussion. Had I noticed that earlier, I wouldn't have tried to get you to start any of the threads we mentioned earlier. Hopefully, one of the other members, SummerFun, CathysOpinion or OldTimeStyle who support the effort to organize this forum will do it.

Ann

I was just thinking someone (Moderator) would pin things, etc. And, although I know how to copy and paste, that faq presentation thread is written by someone as is the newbies thread. Someone with far more knowlege amd expertise than I have. I only know the rudimentals...Nancee

I just noticed that you started the Episode Discussion Thread for Free Fall and the Neal and Kate thread. Both of those are excellent topics for discussion. Had I noticed that earlier, I wouldn't have tried to get you to start any of the threads we mentioned earlier. Hopefully, one of the other members, SummerFun, CathysOpinion or OldTimeStyle who support the effort to organize this forum will do it.

What we probably ought to do is make an agreement among ourselves that one of us, perhaps Nancee, will start the discussion thread every week at a given time (more or less). I've noticed that if someone starts doing it, everyone else soon expects it and that reduces duplicate threads. There was someone here starting them very early at one point, but he/she seems to have stopped, perhaps because they were started too early and disappeared too far down the page.

What we probably ought to do is make an agreement among ourselves that one of us, perhaps Nancee, will start the discussion thread every week at a given time (more or less). I've noticed that if someone starts doing it, everyone else soon expects it and that reduces duplicate threads. There was someone here starting them very early at one point, but he/she seems to have stopped, perhaps because they were started too early and disappeared too far down the page.

Okay. I'll start the threads for the epi's. I like to start them the day of, which will be Tuesday morning. If this is agreeable to everyone. Perhaps someone else should start the discussion threads for the previews.

Another thing occurs to me so we can avoid endless contortions involving spoilers. A spoiler is advance information about an episode, therefore, I think we might want to agree that once an episode ends, information about it is no longer a spoiler and no longer requires a spoiler tag. Otherwise, we tie ourselves up in knots trying to avoid spoilers.

What does everyone think?

(Example: Someone posted yet another duplicate thread for some minor variation in theory, but marked it as having spoilers for Ep. 1-7. To me, nothing already broadcast is a spoiler, so that spoiler warning wasn't needed.)